They speak of a land that never was,
a non-existent tongue.
There is no utterance,
no words.

If we’re put on earth
to understand each other –
who can make sense of death?

Explain how the mountains stole breath,
or translate the darkness
that has fallen?

Who can say what burgeons
in a child’s dream?

Flapping out of an ancient tale,
birds’ wings bear down
on me – and skin’s

akin to stone
as the old women used to say.
When darkness falls

beyond the mountains,
the people I remember look to me
in pain. My words are elegy.

If this is a lament,
we haven’t even
begun to cry.

Jen Hadfield was born in Cheshire and lives in Shetland, whose landscape and natural life persistently informs her work. Her second poetry book Nigh-No-Place (2008, Bloodaxe Books) won the T.S.Eliot Prize in 2008. Her third poetry collection, Byssus, was published by Picador in early 2014. She is currently Writer in Residence at Glasgow University and Glasgow School of Art, supported by Creative Scotland.

Canan Marasligil is a freelance writer, literary translator, editor and curator based in Amsterdam. She specialises in contemporary Turkish literature as well as in comics. She has worked with cultural organisations across wider Europe and has participated in a range of residencies at the Free Word Centre in London (2013), at WAAW in Senegal (2015), at Copenhagen University (2015) and at La Contre Allée in Lille (2017). She is the creator of ‘City in Translation’, a project exploring languages and translation in urban spaces. www.cityintranslation.com